Here is where I am

I often find myself wanting to be somewhere other than where I am.  When I’m at work, I want to be at home. When I’m at home, I want to be on vacation somewhere. When I’m in pain, I want to be comfortable, and when I’m wide awake at 2:30 in the morning, I want to be asleep.

The past 8 days have been miserable for me. I am not a wimp. In fact, I have an incredibly high pain threshold. So for me to be popping various and sundry pharmaceuticals to get relief from this muscle spasm/pinched nerve/misaligned neck thing I have going on means it’s no joke. I did natural childbirth, ya’ll, going from 4 to 10 cm in 45 minutes. I’m one tough broad.

The drugs leave me foggy. The valium–world’s best muscle relaxant–knocks me out cold and leaves me hungover like I had a bottle of wine all by myself. In other words, my brain is foggy. Yesterday, I managed to watch a movie (In the Land of Elah, very sad with great acting) and read about 15 pages of my book … across 16 hours. The rest of the time, I was either asleep, staring vacantly at the TV or face down on the acupuncturist’s table. I have barely made a dent in my to-do list at work, and my attitude is probably a little too “fuck you.” At least in my own head. I have zero tolerance for bullshit and politicking today, and bullshit and politicking is job #1 when you’re in PR.

Because I don’t believe in the random and coincidental, through my fog, today I’m wondering why I’m here. What lesson am I supposed to be learning? What am I supposed to be paying attention to, besides  the owie? Or is it just the owie? Or am I dealing with karma–consequences from previous choices that brought me here?

This all started on Labor Day weekend, when I went salsa dancing and got dipped too hard. Now, I didn’t tell the guy, who was a new partner for me, not to dip me. And he dipped me fast and hard, and I was sore in the low back and neck the next day. I took some ibuprofen for a couple of days and then ignored it. With 30 days until the wedding, I didn’t need to be spending money at the chiropractor and acupuncturist. I didn’t have the time either, nor did I make time to go to the gym.  So I let it go for 30 days and I’ve paid the price since Sept. 25, when I finally got the massage that made it all worse.

As I sit here, I have a line of fire burning down my neck into my shoulder and all the way down my arm into my pinkie. A spot above my left hip is throbbing, and radiating around to the front of my hip. Same old story, six years old. I’m in a bad flare.

Maybe the lesson is that rather than running from the pain, hiding from it, denying it, ignoring it, I should just sit with it. Be here, in the present moment, with some clarity that this is what pain feels like–raw and throbbing and pinching and on fire–and this is what life is. Pain balances out pleasure, like heartache balances out love. You can’t know one without the other. I can’t be anywhere else but here, where I am, so I might as well quit fighting the tide and relax into it. Let it take over, and do what it tells me to do. Right now, it’s telling me to lay down and rest. Maybe for once, instead of fighting, I will give up. Maybe that’s the lesson: acquiescence.